Why terrain matters more than targeting

Conventional oncology is powerful. Chemotherapy, radiotherapy, and immunotherapy can dramatically reduce tumour burden. But here's what standard treatment doesn't address

Chemotherapy doesn't kill cancer stem cells

Tumours contain a subpopulation of stem cells — slow-cycling, treatment-resistant cells that initiate, sustain, and regenerate the cancer. Standard chemotherapy targets rapidly dividing cells, but cancer stem cells survive. They wait. When conditions are right, they repopulate.

This is why "complete response" can be followed by relapse. The bulk was cleared, but the seeds remained.

Cancer is an epigenetic illness

Mutations matter — but what turns oncogenes on? What silences the tumour suppressor genes that should be protecting you?

The answer is epigenetics: chemical signals influenced by your internal environment. Inflammation, hormonal imbalance, oxidative stress, toxic accumulation, chronic infection, unresolved trauma — these change gene expression. They create the conditions where cancer can emerge and thrive.

The Cell Danger Response

Dr Robert Naviaux's research on the Cell Danger Response (CDR) provides a framework for understanding chronic illness — including cancer.

When cells perceive threat (infection, toxins, trauma), they shift into a defensive metabolic state. Energy production changes. Cell-to-cell communication breaks down. Healing stalls.

In a healthy system, this response resolves and normal function returns. But when the threat is sustained — or when the body lacks the resources to complete the healing cycle — cells get stuck.

Cancer cells are, in many ways, cells stuck in chronic danger response — prioritising survival over normal function, refusing to die when they should, reverting to primitive metabolic pathways.

Immune tolerance fails before cancer appears

Your immune system surveys your body constantly, identifying and eliminating abnormal cells. Healthy people produce pre-cancerous cells regularly — and clear them.

Cancer develops when immune surveillance fails. When the immune system becomes tolerant to cells it should be targeting. When chronic inflammation creates an environment that supports tumour growth rather than elimination.

This loss of immune tolerance is the end result of accumulated insults: toxic burden, chronic infections, gut dysbiosis, nervous system dysregulation, nutrient depletion.

The toxic burden no one's addressing

Your oncologist is focused on the tumour. But what about the environment the tumour grew in?

Environmental toxins:

Mould and mycotoxins. Heavy metals. Electromagnetic frequencies. Air and water pollutants. Documented drivers of mitochondrial dysfunction, immune suppression, and epigenetic change.

Exogenous toxins:

Pesticides, herbicides, plastics, endocrine disruptors, pharmaceutical residues, food additives. The average person carries hundreds of synthetic chemicals. Many are known carcinogens.

Endogenous toxins:

Bacterial endotoxins from gut dysbiosis. Metabolic waste from impaired detoxification. Ammonia from protein metabolism. Aldehydes from Candida overgrowth. These internally-generated toxins perpetuate the Cell Danger Response.

Standard oncology doesn't test for mould. It doesn't check your toxic metal load. It doesn't evaluate whether your drainage pathways can clear what treatment is mobilising.

Terrain medicine meets molecular precision

I work at the intersection of two frameworks:

Terrain-based naturopathy — addressing the soil, not just the weeds. Restoring metabolic function, clearing toxic burden, regulating the nervous system, rebuilding immune competence. Changing the internal environment so it no longer supports disease.

Molecular precision testing — using advanced diagnostics like Exacta tumour profiling to see exactly what's driving your cancer at a cellular level, and which therapies your tumour actually responds to.

Most integrative practitioners work on terrain but lack molecular precision. Most conventional oncologists have molecular data but ignore terrain entirely.

I bridge both.

The sequence that makes healing possible

You can't detox a body that's in survival mode. You can't rebuild tissue that's still inflamed. You can't restore vitality while the nervous system is locked in fight-or-flight.

PHASE 1: STABILISE

Before anything else, we create safety in the body.

We regulate the nervous system — you cannot heal from a sympathetic-dominant state. We open drainage pathways — lymphatics, liver, kidneys, bowel, skin — so the body can eliminate what we're about to mobilise. We stabilise blood sugar, support adrenals, and address acute nutritional deficits.

We bind before we mobilise. We calm before we clear.

If you're a sensitive patient — if you react to everything, if you've been told your symptoms don't make sense — this is why. You're not difficult. You're overloaded. Previous practitioners tried to detox you before your system was ready.

PHASE 2: RESTORE

Once the system is stable and drainage is flowing, we begin restoration.

We address the deeper toxic burden: heavy metals, mycotoxins, environmental chemicals, chronic infections. We restore gut integrity and microbiome balance. We support mitochondrial function — the metabolic heart of cellular health. We rebalance hormones disrupted by treatment and illness.

This is where we shift the epigenetic signals. We're not just removing toxins — we're changing the internal environment that was expressing disease.

PHASE 3: REBUILD

The final phase focuses on vitality, resilience, and long-term prevention.

We optimise nutrient status for your specific genetics. We support immune surveillance — the system that should be identifying and eliminating abnormal cells. We address any remaining Cell Danger Response patterns. We rebuild the reserves that cancer and its treatment depleted.

The body needs a reason to stay well, not just instructions to stop being sick.